Publications & Testimony

The most recent vol­ume of Criminology & Public Policy exam­ines the top­ic of race and polic­ing. Contributors to this spe­cial vol­ume offer time­ly insights in this con­tro­ver­sial area, with most agree­ing that more can be done to address the long-stand­ing ten­sion between street offi­cers and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or. The arti­cles fea­tured in the jour­nal are​“The Importance of Research on Race and Policing: Making Race Salient to Individuals and Institutions Within Criminal…

Because of the high costs of pur­su­ing death penal­ty cas­es, Georgia’s pub­lic defend­er sys­tem has run out of funds. Most of state’s 72 cap­i­tal cas­es have been brought to a stand­still. The judge in one recent high-pro­­file case has put off jury selec­tion until September 10 because of the fund­ing cri­sis. The high-pro­­file case involves Brian Nichols, who has been charged with the 2005 cour­t­house shoot­ing that left a judge, and three oth­er vic­tims dead. Because the death…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s​“Death Row, USA” reports that the num­ber of peo­ple on death row in the United States rose slight­ly to 3,350 as of January 1, 2007, an increase of 6 inmates from October 1, 2006, but a decline of 23 inmates from a year ago. The slight increase appears to be part­ly the result of the rel­a­tive­ly few exe­cu­tions in the last quar­ter of 2006. California (660), Florida (397), and Texas (393) con­tin­ued to have the largest death…

A mea­sure to repeal Nebraska​’s death penal­ty and replace it with a sen­tence of life with­out parole fell one vote short of mov­ing to the sec­ond of three stages in con­sid­er­a­tion by the uni­cam­er­al leg­is­la­ture. It was the first time the full leg­is­la­ture had debat­ed the death penal­ty in near­ly two decades. The mea­sure’s defeat fol­lowed two days of debate about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, includ­ing whether deci­sions to impose the death penal­ty reflect social,…

UPDATE: Henderson’s exe­cu­tion date of April 18 was stayed in order to con­sid­er new defense motions in the case. A new exe­cu­tion date of June 13 was ten­ta­tive­ly set. Upcoming Texas Execution Raises Questions of Appropriate Sentence Cathy Henderson (pic­tured with Sr. Helen Prejean) is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Texas on April 18 for the 1994 mur­der of Brandon Baugh, an infant she was babysit­ting. Henderson would be the 12^th woman put to death in the U.S. since capital…

Cathy Henderson (pic­tured with Sr. Helen Prejean) is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Texas on April 18 for the 1994 mur­der of Brandon Baugh, an infant she was babysit­ting. Henderson would be the 12^th woman put to death in the U.S. since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed. Since her arrest, Henderson has main­tained that the child’s death was acci­den­tal. She said that she dropped the baby, frac­tur­ing his skull, and then pan­icked after real­iz­ing she could not revive him. She then…

Legislation to estab­lish a com­mis­sion to exam­ine Kentucky’s death penal­ty and report its find­ings to the General Assembly has gained sup­port from for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cials and vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers. The bill, pro­posed by Rep. Tom Burch, would require the task force to review whether cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment deters crime, is applied fair­ly, and is still accept­able to the pub­lic. It would mark the first time in four decades that the state has examined its…

Corrections offi­cials, pros­e­cu­tors and police chiefs recent­ly gath­ered in Annapolis, Maryland, to voice sup­port for a leg­isla­tive mea­sure that would repeal the state’s death penal­ty.​“It is a human sys­tem, and because it is fal­li­ble and because it is human, it makes mis­takes. Executions make those mis­takes irre­versible,” said Matthew Campbell, a for­mer deputy state’s attor­ney for Montgomery and Howard coun­ties. Gary J. Hilton, a for­mer war­den at the Trenton State Prison…

Dr. Philip B. Woodhall, M.D., who prac­ticed emer­gency med­i­cine in North Carolina for many years, recent­ly wrote about the pro­posed role of doc­tors in car­ry­ing out lethal injec­tions. He stat­ed that med­i­cine and exe­cu­tions do not mix. “[D]octors are giv­en extra­or­di­nary rights and priv­i­leges,” he wrote, and​“these pow­ers are ded­i­cat­ed to the preser­va­tion of human life, not to the ser­vice of death.” Woodhall urged North Carolina’s Department of Corrections to abandon…

Maricopa County, Arizona, has more pend­ing death penal­ty cas­es than Los Angeles County, which has more than twice as many res­i­dents, and more than the so-called​“death penal­ty cap­i­tal” of Harris County, Texas. There are more than 130 cas­es in tri­al or await­ing tri­al, and its four indi­gent defense agen­cies say that they have run out of attor­neys to han­dle the cas­es. Strained by the record num­ber of cas­es, Judge James Keppel gave pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, and…